UCMJ manual updated with fetal rights

Published: April 19, 2007 at 10:54 AM

WASHINGTON April 19 (UPI) -- The same day the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ban against a type of abortion, the White House amended military law, making it a crime to kill an "unborn child."

President George W. Bush issued an executive order amending the manual for the Uniform Code of Military Justice to include, among other things, separate legal status for a fetus.

The changes to the manual reflect changes to U.S. law made by Congress in 2004, when it passed and Bush signed the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004."

Anyone subject to the UCMJ who "causes the death of, or bodily injury ... to a child who is in utero ... is guilty of a separate offense" as if the injury or death occurred to the "unborn child's mother," the manual states.

The 2004 law reversed part of the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case Roe vs. Wade, which in striking down a Texas anti-abortion law also ruled that a fetus is not entitled to protection under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The law does not require proof that the person committing the crime against the "unborn child" knows the woman is pregnant, or that the action was undertaken with the intent to harm the fetus. The person can be charged with "intentionally killing or attempting to kill a human being."

The law does not apply to legal abortion providers, medical personnel treating the pregnant woman or to the pregnant woman herself.

The Supreme Court Wednesday upheld a law banning "partial birth abortions," a rarely used procedure -- intact dilation and extraction of the fetus, or D&X -- most often employed when the health of the mother is at risk. The law upheld by the court includes no exceptions for health of the mother.

Ellie